Camino 1.0 for PPC and Intel-Mac is now available. Camino is a web browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface, and powerful Gecko layout engine. It practices the art of simplicity with an uncluttered user interface but with the features you expect from a modern browser like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking settings. On other browser news, Access has announced new Netfront plans.
Whenever I have to use a Mac for extended web browsing, I download Camino and use it instead of Firefox/Safari. Its behavior makes more sense to me that either of the others’ on the Mac platform, and it’s a pleasure to use. Glad they could finally bring it up to 1.0 release, I’ve been wondering when Mozilla would put that push behind Camino. Anyone know why Camino has such little support in Mozilla?
“Anyone know why Camino has such little support in Mozilla?”
Because there is a native Mac port of Firefox which is the browser Mozilla promotes? I guess Mozilla doesn’t want divide its resources more than needed.
Actually, even Mozilla had to acknowledge that there exists a need for a native Cocoa browser than uses Gecko (See their 1.7 roadmap). Mac users have a much higher expectation when it comes to HIG conformance and system integration. Firefox can never fully deliver these due to its cross-platform nature.
BTW, Camino actually started long before Firefox and it’s actually one of the primary inspirations for Fx. There was never official support for Camino even in the old days. Camino has always been a community-level project since its inception and it ran fine.
“Mac users have a much higher expectation when it comes to HIG conformance and system integration.”
I am a mac user, and I don’t give a shit about this. What I want ? A good browser, that’s all.
“Camino has always been a community-level project since its inception and it ran fine.”
Yes, and so does SeaMonkey.
No, SeaMonkey used to be an official mozilla project (well, the only one).
As for the HIG conformance thing, I am sure as you become more accustomed to the OS X environment, you will become more aware of it.
Edited 2006-02-16 05:08
We use it on linux, get the same experience in Windows, then why shift to another browser, why not use our trusted aide.
Firefox will never have to same level of system integration as Camino due to its Cross-platform nature. Camino already has Bonjour, Addressbook and Keychain integration and Apple-spell based spell checking is coming in version 1.1.
Camino is also faster than Firefox at launching and its GUI is in tune with the rest of the system due to the use of Cocoa instead of XUL.
Camino is far faster (on a G4, that really means something!), and more stable. On Linux, FF is fast enough, and stable. On Windows, it’s fast enough, and every other release or so is stable.
The interface is almost identical to FF.
Erh…
I am using a 1st generation macmini with 512 mb of ram and under Tiger 10.4.5.
I don’t really see any speed difference between both browser.
fx is stable on every single OS it works. Camino more stable ? I don’t think so. More Apple like, indeed. But not more stable or quicker.
I am talking of my own use, of course.
Similar machine (also upgraded to 1/2GB RAM), but 10.3, very different experience. After several tabs, FF just starts to get slow, and was nowhere near the speed of FF in Linux on the same box.
Camino was night and day compared to a G4-optimized 1.5 at the time (and that was somewhat better than the stock FF, once you got a few windows open). Also, it hasn’t crashed yet, unlike the optimized one or the official FF.
Maybe 10.3 is more crashy than 10.4 ?
“Also, it hasn’t crashed yet, unlike the optimized one or the official FF.”
I didn’t see any difference there. Maybe because camino is for some points less powerfull than Fx ?
And I am using my own homemade build.
Less powerful? Eh. It opens pages.
I doubt 10.3 has much to do with FF crashing…10.4 might just be snappier in general, though (they did change how things were rendered, IIRC).
“And I am using my own homemade build.”
That’s probably a lot of, right there. There are a lot of us who still loathe trying that sort of thing .
The reason I use Camino rather than Firefox is that Firefox has a tendency to reload pages for no apparent reason, resulting in the loss of whatever data you entered into a given form on a web interface (Movable Type, Yahoo Mail etc.). That’s a good enough reason to use any browser except Firefox on a Mac.
For Gecko 1.9 and Cairo-based graphics. With Cairo, Camino and Firefox/Mac can finally render pages with Quartz instead of the slow, buggy QuickDraw.
An equally exciting option would be to render with glitz. Most macs have OGL and Cairo/Glitz will make Gecko one of the fastest HTML engine on earth.
On the camino website they say that “find-as-you-type allows you to easily search the current webpage.” I’m assuming that they are refering to how firefox does finding in a page. But I can not find a way to enable it.
And if they had a slect where to download, rather then a temp folder, I would use camino in a heartbeat.
For download location, go to preferences / download…
10 seconds to find it
Find as you type ?
“/” and to stop it, ESC ?
… then Safari or FireFox. At leat in my machine which is pretty low end these days: PowerBookG4@400Mhz with only 384MB of RAM…
That’s why I use it instead of the other two browsers. I need speed in this old machine.